Loving You? I Went For The Alternative
by Virgoleo23
Summary: She's always made it so easy for me to hate her, and I...I have to hate her. We have to hate each other. We're supposed to.   We just are.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: Hi! I'm back again with another Fanfic. I hope you enjoy it, it took a month in the making. And it was beta'd by _randomness 101-Fanfic Freak_ who was kind enough to correct my awful spelling of Robert Pattinson :) BTW, this was written long before the Twilight spoof aired on iCarly, so for the story's sake, Freddie has never been in anyway affiliated with Rob Pattinson or Edward Cullen. Ever. Rated T only for paranoia. And because I say so. On to the story!  
**

**Disclaimer! Freddie belongs to Dan Schneider. And my wildest dreams. But not to me :(**

**Freddie's POV:  
**

Some people are just so easy to hate.

Preferably people who couldn't care less.

For instance, due to Carly's recent psycho-obsession with maliciously sparkling vampires, I have since composed a list the length of a short Russian novel of the reasons why I hate Robert Pattinson.

But, realistically, if Robert Pattinson ever walked up to me on the street and asked me what I thought of him, well...I really wish I could tell you that I was the suave and collected guy that told off a multi-millionaire movie star/ teenage heartthrob... buuut my initial reaction would probably be to stare blatantly, dazed, and wonder what the heck the vampire was doing outside of my TV set.

After my brain kicked in, I would probably have been groveling at his feet for the secret as to how he managed to con millions of teenage girls (and Spencer) into thinking that glitter was manly.  
And mainly how to get them to stop. That shimmer epoxy is really starting to burn Spencer's skin.

So truthfully, it's really convenient to hate people that we don't know, will most likely never know, and will therefore never find out how much you hate them.  
I'm ashamed to admit it, being the gentleman my mother raised. But my mother raised me for a perfect world, where everyone waited until they got to know a person before they placed their judgements on them, and where all commuters picked up their trash on the subway. Being human meant that neither one of them was going to happen. Ever. And why fight it?

Life is tough, life isn't fair. People are constantly looking for an outlet. Why not blow off some steam blaming your bad mood on the Justin Bieber song blasting in the car next to you? Or get ticked off at an A-list celebrity for having everything that you never will right at their fingertips?

They're just names. Just faces. Just words. You never look at them and think to yourself:  
"They're just people."  
Because to you, they're not.

And how wrong is it to hate a name anyway? A few letters on a page that can be easily rearranged into a thousand other different combinations. A picture in a magazine can't retaliate, or feel the pain of the unprecedented shards of loathing you fling at it. Heck, even in person Robert Pattinson probably wouldn't care that I hate him.  
I'm just another disembodied name to him too.

That's the thing about celebrities, they come and go so quickly, that unless you actually get a chance to meet them, they're of little value to you. New names and faces will soon fill their spots up just as quickly.

And you'd better hope that you never meet them, because once you shake their hand, and feel the warmth in their greeting, and laugh along with them at that clueless idiot on the other side of the room; they become real people.

And it's hard to hate real people. Really hard.

No matter how much you want to.

* * *

Around the time my voice was about two octaves higher, and my head was 14" closer to ground level, I had convinced myself that I was desperately in love with Ms. Carly Shay. Who was, as my luck would have it, unfortunately in love with Jake Crandall.

I hated him. He was all wrong for her.

He had dated half the girls at school already and he was too popular to have gotten his high GPA legitimately and he acted too nicely to actually be a nice guy and his left earlobe was slightly lower than his right one and he couldn't sing to save his life and it doesn't even matter that I couldn't sing to save mine, he was still all wrong for her.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

And that was why I hated him. At least I tried to.

I was doing a great job at despising his every molecule until he actually joined the A/V club a month or two after appearing on iCarly. I tried my best to hold him at arm's length, because he still couldn't be trusted. I didn't have much of a reason as to _why_ at that point, I just knew that he couldn't be.

But after a mishap involving a lock malfunction with the doors to the A/V lab where we were trapped inside together for five hours on end, we actually started up a normal conversation. Approaching the third hour in, the realization struck me that in the midst of all the commotion, I had forgotten that I was talking to _Jake_. Jake the smooth talking stud of the ninth grade.  
Because somehow, when I wasn't looking, I had let him become a real person.

By the time the janitors found us and managed to break open the lock, the idea of Jacob Crandall had suddenly become a tech-savvy musician, who was using his would-be college funds to keep his grandmother out of the nursing home after his mother died and his father moved halfway across the country. And I couldn't possibly hate this Jake.

I found out a week later that all it takes is a leftover scrap of bacon fat and a conniving demon named Sam to gunk up a lock.

* * *

And so now, a few inches taller and a couple bursts of testosterone later, I'm standing in the iCarly studio with Jake Crandall, my best male friend, while he picks out a tie to wear as he takes out my female worst nightmare.

Hey, someone had to stop him from rocking the Hawaiian floral print.

So we go on drifting through mindless conversation, if only to fill the otherwise silence of the deserted studio. After a few minutes of this drivel, I found myself asking him why out of all the girls in eleventh grade, he wanted to go out with Sam Puckett, the Terror of Ridgeway?

And his face just lit up at the thought, and his eyes got a faraway look in them, like his mind was drifting in a daydream. Then he told me that she was amazing, how she managed to exude confidence in every compromising situation, how she was at complete comfort with herself and what she stood for, and just didn't care whether you liked it or not. He talked about how stunningly gorgeous she was and how she was the strongest girl he'd ever met, and how she always seemed to be smiling and always spoke her mind and didn't I ever see any of that?

And I hastily avoided his eye contact, staring aimlessly at the floor, because no, I never had thought of her that way.

And I couldn't listen to the things Jake said because he was wrong. Again.  
Just like last time. I knew that she was truly a demon inside, and she ate like a starving gorilla, and beat me up daily and laughed in my face as she shot out an insult, and she hated me. I knew she hated me, she told me so. So I returned her hate, and I pushed her back when she pulled me in, because she would never become a real person to me because she _wasn't_ a real person, and I...I just hated her.

I've been telling myself that ever since that night on the fire escape when...just for a moment, no more than a second really, I had thought... I thought that she might have been more than just a name and a face. That maybe the person sitting in front of me who wasn't exuding any confidence at all, or was in any way sure of herself...maybe she was real. That maybe _this_ was real.

It had sure felt like it when she leaned in.

But it wasn't. And she's not. She can't be.

If she was real I would have noticed now how her blonde hair that curled in soft ringlets over her bare shoulders reflected the evening light as she walked down the stairs.

If she was real I would have seen how Carly's borrowed strapless sundress made her look for all the world like a down-turned flower in the summer air.

If she was real I would have realized how out of place Jake's arm looked wrapped awkwardly around her waist, and how she was wearing a touch of make-up that she really didn't need, just like she was any other girl.

But she's not.

So I didn't notice any of that. Not at all.

Because she's always made it easy for me to hate her, and I...I _have_ to hate her. We have to hate each other. We're just supposed to hate each other.  
We just are.

Because she hates me, and Carly's always said that I tend to fall for the girls that will never love me back. And I've always known it to be true.

Which is why she can't become real. I can't let her become real.

It's so much simpler when the person you hate never knows you enough to hate you back. It's so much more complicated when they know you, and don't hate you back at all. It's so much worse when they know you, and do. Especially when you never wanted to hate them in the first place.

Sometimes life sucks like that.

So I can't let myself feel the old pang of resentment towards Jake as he walks her slowly up to the elevator. Because Jake was a real person now, ever since the night we got locked in the lab together. He was Jake, with the feeble Grandma and the guitar and the A/V club and the dreams. We were best friends. I couldn't hate him. I didn't want to hate him.

But still...

I watched him brush a stray curl behind the shell of her ear, and then lean in to softly peck the smooth curve of her cheek. She turned to him and her smile lit up the stale hallway air.

I never thought a smile could cause that much pain.

Yeah, sometimes the only thing worse than trying not to hate someone you care about...  
...is trying not to care about someone you hate.

And it'll take a lot more than a scrap of leftover bacon fat to let either one of us forget that.

**Hope you liked it, I wanted something with a little less sunshine and rainbows, and maybe a little more sorrow. Can you say 'unrequited lurve'? Which is only acceptable in Seddie form IMO. No Creddie will exist in my writing, sorry Creddiers. **

**Fun Fact: A short Russian novel can be as long as a thousand pages. Now you know.**

**Drop a review and I'll mention you in my next fic! Is it bribery? Naaaahhh ;)  
**


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Look at me, trying a multichapter fic for the first time! This will be most likely a three-shot, maybe four, just so you know. Before you read this chapter MAKE SURE YOU LISTEN TO 'DROPS OF JUPITER' BY TRAIN! I can't stress that enough. It enhances the effect of this chapter so much more. And I know the beginning of this chapter is drastically different from the last one. It's done on purpose. Read to the end, you'll see my point. Also, here is my new pimp list of all the amazing reviewers that gave me their view of my little drabbles:**

**Shoutout to:**

**moonshinekiss (Yes, I have heard about iOMG. I can't WAIT!)  
**

**pigwiz (the stupendously stupendous, may I add)  
**

**The Earl of Sandwich (who writes the kind of awesome criticism that writers _want_ to hear)  
**

**Shabyville (Such glowing praise, awww shucks ;)  
**

**Invader Johnny (Short and to the point. Yup, hit the nail on the head there)  
**

**CookieLivcat (An ideal reader, you caught every point I tried to make. And no, thank YOU! Such a nice review)  
**

**bluejay63 (Thanks, here's your update!)**

**Disclaimer: iCarly is owned by a male. Dan Scheider is a male. I am a female. Therefore, the law of Modus Tollens states that I do not own iCarly.  
**

_I'm afraid that she might think of me as _  
_Plain ol' Jane_  
_Told a story about a man who is too afraid to fly so he never did land._

I wish my PearHome wasn't all the way across the room.  
If I had any energy left to move, I'd switch it off fast enough to short-circuit the damn thing.

Instead I turn my head to face the faded wall beside me.  
Not the most soundproof method, but something tells me I need to hear these words.

Which in no way stops them from hurting.

_Tell me did the wind sweep you off your feet?_  
_Did you finally get the chance to dance along the light of day_  
_And head back to the milky way?_

She probably did. I'll bet she did.  
I sighed, letting the sudden gust of breath tug at a fold in the wrinkled bedsheets.  
She always did have the universe tucked away behind her left ear.  
She just had to reach back and she could have it all for herself the second her dreams got too big for our tiny studio.

_And tell me, did Venus blow your mind?_  
_Was it everything you wanted to find?_

Oh, if it was out there she'd find it.  
And once she's got a taste, she'll take the whole world by storm for it. She'd leave then, because she would never find it here with me.

I'm not even sure what 'it' is anymore.

But it's something that I'll never be.  
After all, what makes me so special? I'm not sure I'll ever find it with anyone. I don't know if anyone could find it with me.

And on a dim Sunday afternoon, no matter how tightly I squeeze my eyes shut, nothing stops my world from coming apart in front of me.

I haven't cried since the third grade.

I didn't think my eyes would remember how. That doesn't stop an angry tear from leaking out from the corner of my eye to trickle down and pool into a damp, salty splotch on my white pillowcase.

Out of all the pain she's caused me over the years, it figures that she'd cut the deepest without even knowing that she'd made a scratch.

I scrub my face angrily with my fist, mad at the song for making me lose it, mad at myself for being too much of a damned coward to risk the fall, because now I'll never land. Stupid song.

I swear if I had a decent voice, a sense of rhythm and any amount of musical talent, I'd be the greatest songwriter on earth. I've got enough conflicting emotions swimming around in my head for the next five hit singles.

I wonder if this is how Patrick Monahan felt while he was writing this absolutely infuriating song.

Maybe his sworn enemy was pulling the universe out from behind her ear and sharing it with his best friend too. But I doubt anyone but me could get themselves into that big of a mess.

God, I'm such a girl, coming apart at the seams over the one person who could care less about me. This is life, things don't work out the way they do in cheesy romance movies. I was doing a very good job of hating her to the fullest, and I will most likely go back to hating her in ten minutes, when my mom gets home.

But right now, in the safety of my room and the fading shadows of the afternoon,  
I think I'll just allow myself to breathe.

Because holding up an act of that magnitude can exhaust the hope right out of a person.

_And did you miss me while you were looking for yourself out there?_

I turned off the PearHome.

* * *

I saw her in school the next day.

She had changed back from Carly's flowing sundress to her signature hoodie, jeans, and Converse sneakers.  
The normalcy of her appearance was relieving.

Because maybe now that she had stepped back into her bully persona, things could get back to normal between us. Not that she even knew that anything was different in the first place.

But I needed just a little bit of closure.

So I asked her how her date with Jake went. And if life was one of those cheesy romance movies, their date would have been a disaster, she would have reduced the two of them to a strictly platonic relationship, no more than that, and have inadvertently given me just the tiniest glimmer of hope.

But of course, none of that happened.

They had an amazing time, he took her to dinner, bought her barbecued ribs from the all-you-can-eat buffet, she got them kicked out of the restaurant, and they danced until 11 in the 21 and under club. They had made another date next Friday.

I smiled and told her I was happy for her.

It was all for the best, really. I wasn't sulking in my room on a cloudy Sunday night anymore. The sun was shining uncomfortably bright on another painful Monday morning.  
We were enemies again, and any hope I may have harbored didn't have enough elbow room to grow into something significant.

It's a good thing too, such hopes can be dangerous. It's better to shove them all back to where they can't resurface again. It's less painful that way.

Besides, I don't have to let her mean anything to me. I'm sure if I tried hard enough I could mentally hold her at arm's length, I could keep her from becoming real again. Look at where I ended up when I let that happen. There would be less pain this way.  
It was safe.

_Plain ol' Jane_  
_Told a story about a man who is too afraid to fly so he never did land._

And, as if to reinforce this theory, she shoved me back against the lockers before stealing my breakfast on the way to class.

I added it to my mental list of reasons why I hate her.

I've had to remind myself of that list more often than I would have liked to, recently.

* * *

A/V club ran late that day.

We were all given the task by Principal Franklin of editing and organizing a bunch of orientation videos into the school website. It would have been a lot easier if Ms. Briggs hadn't ruined nearly every shot. None of us would have guessed she was such a camera hog.

So anyway, we couldn't leave the building until the website was done, and because absolutely nothing had changed between us, I opted to work with Jake.

We were on our hourly five minute break, pasting the heads of nasty teachers into Photoshop and sticking them on the bodies of overweight animals.

Hey, we may be nerds, but we're still human.

And while Jake put the finishing touches on Briggosaurus Rex, I was wondering whether or not I should bring up his date with Sam last night. I was curious, but I wasn't sure if I really wanted to open that can of worms just yet. Turns out I didn't have to.

Jake steered our lighthearted conversation to the topic of his relationship with the demon. They had had an awesome date; she was just such a great person to be around. He really loved spending time with her.

Since I harbored only hate for the evil blonde, this news did not affect me at all. Nope, not in the least. But I did have one question.

Did he, you know, kiss her?

No, he'd said. He hadn't yet. But he would.

He would.

I nodded. Our time for talking was up; we had to get back to the editing.

_Can you imagine no love, pride, deep-fried chicken?_  
_Your best friend always sticking up for you, even when I know you're wrong_  
_Can you imagine no first dance, freeze dried romance _  
_Five-hour phone conversation?_  
_The best soy latte that you ever had . . . and me?_

She'd be better off without me anyway.

**This chapter is dedicated to pigwiz, who was kind enough to beta me and my ever-changing tenses, and Multi-Shipper Girl. She's a Creddier, but we've been having the most intriguing PM conversations on difference of opinion between ships. It's interesting to hear things from a different POV. And she writes some awesome fanfics that even us Seddiers should check out. Here's to peace between ships!**

**R+E-V*I/E^W= Leave a review if you can do basic math. **

**And because you'll get mentioned in the next chapter. This bribery thing is growing on me ;)  
**


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